


A Bath (Missing Moment, 4x06)

by missclairebelle



Series: miss clairebelle imagine prompts [4]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Outlander Season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 15:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17552684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: A missing moment in Episode 4x06 where Jamie and Claire talk about Brianna from a prompt received on Imagine Claire and Jamie: Imagine sweet moment before John Willie and Murtagh came to dinner. Some romantic scene …





	A Bath (Missing Moment, 4x06)

If asked to swear ( _hand upon Bible, before God or a Court of Law_ ), I would be able to say two things about John Grey.  

First, John Grey was a preternaturally handsome enigma.  

Second, my husband’s friendship with the man baffled me utterly.  I knew of Jamie’s appreciation of John’s inclination towards self-sacrifice and honor early in life. They were traits exhibited in abundance one night when John attacked my husband. ( _After his botched attack, a soft-faced, virginal John fell prey to Jamie’s manufactured threat to ravage a True English Rose.  Over the years, we had often laughed about the situation –– the frightened look in the eyes of a young man, no a_ ** _child_** _, Jamie’s extraction of information through sleight of hand manufactured by my decision to barge into the interrogation, the way John could laugh of it now._ )

I also grasped ( _though failed to understand_ ) Jamie’s sense of obligation and friendship arising from John’s decision to commit Jamie to serve Hellwater instead of into some other form of indentured servitude.  

( _The quietness in Murtagh about those missing years were the only thing that helped me see how Jamie gleaned some appreciation for the arrangement, notwithstanding the horrible things that happened while he was there.  Chief among them, the circumstances surrounding the conception and loss of yet another child, Jamie’s taking of yet another life even in the service of saving a son he would hardly know._ )

But then there was Ardsmuir.  The man was my husband’s jailer.  Although things certainly could have been  _worse_  for Jamie, my husband had bartered his companionship for the lesser incidents of humanity and scraps of subsistence from John.  Medical attention in exchange for another prisoner a token offered for Jamie’s companionship over pot roast and chess. ( _Though he drew the line at losing his Queen to appease John._ )  A holding of court in the warden’s chambers over the need for blankets and explaining with startling calm ( _according to him_ ) the prisoners’ needs for nutrition from some source other than the meat of rodents infesting the prison. But what John gave ( _what he was able to give_ ) consisted of hardly more than meager scraps. John was still cloaked in red, a man designated to administer the Jacobites’ punishment for the mere exercise of seeking self determination.

I also could see from this young boy ( _a son_ ) that Jamie had a well of appreciation that he was raised well.  Comfortable.  Not on the run.

Despite all of this confusion over their friendship, I had to give John credit.

He could read a room.  

John.  Murtagh.  Jamie.  Me.  Willie.  

( _Oh.  Willie.  The conversation in the print shop, the tremble in Jamie’s hands as he passed me the pocket-sized portrait of a son he would never raise. The son who he entrusted to his jailer.  “An honorable man,” Jamie had asserted then_.)

No, it was not the Willie in the printshop portrait that stood in my home.

_It was **William**_.

Everyone, save the child, felt it.  

The way he was clay made half of Jamie’s body and half of someone else.  

There was talk of dinner.  

Of stretching the rabbit stew that I had meant for just the three of us ––  _Jamie, Murtagh, me_  –– to cover the Lords Grey and Ellsmere.  

Our conversation faded into nothing. 

The dead space between words became static.  

The moments between topics buzzed with awkwardness.  

Talking became impossible because secrets pressed against lips, and speaking ( _even a breath_ ) would let them break free from a dam, to flood the earth between us. Certain truths were shared only among a sampling of the company.  Chief among them, the paternity of the small boy in his ostentatious, silky breeks the color of emeralds and coat of crushed sapphire with broad brass buttons.  

In the static, Jamie turned to the fire, touched the mantle, bowed his head.

“Jamie…” I started, turning to him and stopping mid-step as tension tightened in his shoulders.

And at that, John had cleared his throat and taken William by the shoulder. “ _It’s best that we go tend to our horses, William_.”

And in that moment, I found a certain unlikely appreciation for John Grey.

His transition out of the static was so  _natural_.  

A diversion spoken in a way that would have made me hug him in any other circumstances.  

( _Had I liked him more. Had I not developed, unbidden, a hot seed of hatred deep in my womb for him the moment I crossed the threshold of my home to see him standing before my hearth with my husband. Had I not had my hand on his son’s shoulder.  John’s son’s shoulder.  Jamie’s son’s shoulder.  Not my son’s shoulder.  Had it not been for the sand trap of disappointment opened beneath my feet, sucking me down for the things that I had missed, that I could not control._ )

With a grumble about  _something or another_ , Murtagh also excused himself.

And I was again alone with Jamie, the shutters closing me off from a line of sight into his mood.  Nothing cast light onto the corners of thought where the feelings dwelled.  

“Are you… okay?”  My voice skipped, a stone glancing across placid surface of water, having no idea the best approach.

Though he shook his head, he did not say a word. Dropping his hands and turning from the hearth, he simply muttered that he was going to change into more suitable dinner attire.

Having no sense of what to do, other than to be  _near_ , I mumbled that I would slip into something else, too.  It was there, near our bed, where something about him broke me.  

Perhaps it was the quiver in his hands as he reached to the neckline of his shirt, stiff fingers worrying the fabric before he pulled it up and over his head ( _the sweat and dirt and grime of the labor he poured into making the Ridge our home made it soft and grey_ ).

Perhaps it was the way he had discarded his usual tidiness, allowing his shirt to fall to the floor with a heavy  _thwap_.  

Perhaps it was how he undid his breeks, but did not push them off of his hips. As though he had been distracted by some more pressing thought ( _his fingers all but trembling as he settled his hands at his hips and stared past me, through walls, towards unseeable horizon_ ).

Perhaps it was the hitch of his breath as he sat at the edge of our bed ( _where that morning he had taken his time with my body, made love to me so tenderly, so slowly, that I had wondered if the basalt wheels of time at the center of the earth were grinding to a halt, his mouth swallowing the moans created by his labor before they could be eaten by the walls created by his labor_ ).  The ropes ( _drawn tight_ ) holding the mattress up squeaked their protest beneath his weight, and he rested a hand on his stomach, like he was about to be ill.

Perhaps it was the distant burr of his mind working overtime, fingers flexing and relaxing into a fist before tapping away at the ridged arc of his muscular thigh.

( _I knew the quietest parts of his mind, just as he knew mine.  And in the abundance of quiet moments captured not in the four corners of a photo album, but contained within the four corners of an eighteenth century cabin, I knew him better than ever.  I could see the rhythm of his children’s names beating like a drum in his head.  Faith.  Brianna.  Willie._ ** _No_** _.  William.  Names that would never belong to Jamie in the way that he longed for –– simply to hear their voices call out whatever iteration of “father” they so chose in childhood._ )

Quietly, I gathered the supplies to clean the dirt of the day from his body and brought them to our bedside.

“Make room for me, my lad.”

He dutifully spread his knees to create a space for me, eyes focused on the small stool where I set a basin of warm water, two clean cloths, and a brush.  

I touched his face, only for a few moments, drawing his gaze back to me and up.  “Talk to me?  You know you can tell me whatever is in your mind.”

Sighing, he nuzzled his mouth to my palm. “Tell me about my daughter.  More, I mean.”

The request startled me, my eyebrows knitting together.  “But Willie––”

“ _Aye_ , Willie.”  

He stopped, shook his head as though he thought better of it.  ( _It struck me that my husband had never named a child, never conceived of the name that others would call to them.  He had given William the name James, but no one would speak it._ )

“I’ll never ken Brianna.  Just as I dinna ken her sister.  He’s here.  Now.  I’ve laid eyes upon him.  But I’ll no’ ever have a dinner wi’ my  _ **daughters**_.”

_Faith_.

Somehow the single syllable of her name ( _a word meaning complete trust or confidence, a burden and gift of spiritual apprehension_ ) knocking about in my mind was too much in the moment. He had said it more of late ( _her name, one that I gave her_ ), and I found myself wondering how often he had thought of her in those twenty years.  In our separation, we lost the opportunity to carry one another’s grief, and it still made my heart ache, my stomach go unsettled.

_But for this moment, another daughter._

_Brianna._

I dipped a corner of the cloth into the basin before wiping gently along his hairline, down his temple.  Cloth chased beads of grime as they rolled over his cheekbone.  And stories unraveled from my unconscious mind.  

Things that I did not know I remembered.

I explained that father and daughter had the same habit of peeling raw tomatoes, asserting rather baselessly I thought, that the flesh was more tender sans skin.  

I told him about a young Bree’s disgust for ice cubes in fizzy drinks because she said the cold made her teeth sing.  

The dance recital where she missed a step, had a tantrum, and stomped her small tap shoes on the lights lining the stage with such gusto that she sent sparks into the audience and made the recital devolve into some sort of apocalyptic chaos. 

The time my towel fell free in the kitchen as I tried to get her off to school, running madly late for work myself, and she asked me why I had a beard between my legs. 

The constant rotation of perpetually dying goldfish, my quiet ritual of sneaking into her room to steal away her “sleeping” fish and dispatch it down the toilet when she was not looking, only to replace it.  Her indignance when she said “ _I know what you are doing, mom!_ ” in her most American accent at the age of five, my hands ( _guilty dead goldfish thieves_ ) holding the bowl over the toilet.  

The speech she gave in sixth grade to The Optimist Club. The way she had said that her mother the healer inspired her ( _though we had fought in the car the entire way to the school_ ), and her prize of a twenty dollar savings bond that she said she wanted to donate to a food pantry.  

I fell silent as I turned from his clean face, reached for the brush.  Though everything in my being was here with Jamie, without regret over my choice to return to him, my heart ached for the hole left by my daughter’s absence.

“I ken this is hard for ye,” he whispered softly, fingers catching mine as they worked through a stubborn tangle.

He drew my fingers to his mouth.  Swallowing, I whispered, “Don’t.” Tears were streaking down my face and when he reached to wipe them, I shook my head. “I love you, and you love him.”

_We had missed so much._    _I would not (_ ** _could not_** _) begrudge him for missing Willie._

After a time, his hair again laying in well-mannered waves along the back of his neck, ready for me to plait it and tie it there. “He was such a little Lord down by the stream.  You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Oh aye?” he asked.

Snorting, I recalled for him the scene that Murtagh and I had happened upon.  His son, glowering over some harmless leeches. The turn of his brows and grimace as I popped them free from his shins.  His hand found my hip, ran along the curve of it.  

“You look perfectly suitable for a dinner with Lord John and your little lord progeny.”

Snorting, he drew me closer by the hip, rested his face against my stomach.  “Ye dinna ken the blessing having ye here with me is.  I have all I need here in my own arms.”

I dropped to my knees in front of him, taking his cheeks in my hands as I inhaled the musk of him.   _The odor of the man with whom I was building a life here in the middle of a great, blue-green forest._   “I have all I need, too.”

He kissed me then, slowly at first, but developing an intensity that made me burn although our company would surely return to us soon. It was over as soon as it began, leaving my swollen mouth breathless.

“I’ll owe ye,” he said quietly after pulling away, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.  “For cleaning me.  For pulling me back together afore we sit back down together wi’ John and Willie, Murtagh, too…”

I made a contemplative noise, rubbing the tender nub of my right knee as I rose from the hard floor.  “I’ll expect payment with interest.  Probably a full bath, a good buffing with the salt scrub that I made.”

With a failed wink, he nodded. “Ye can count on me taking my time wi’ a full bath later.”


End file.
